Thursday 5 September 2013

TUPE Consultation - Government Response Published

The government has published its Response to its Consultation on TUPE. The summary below of what the government is not changing is probably as important as what itis changing.

The main changes which the government is proceeding with are amending the TUPE Regulations to:-

  • allow renegotiation of terms agreed from collective agreements one year after transfer, provided any changes are no less favourable to employees
  • the location of a workforce can be within the scope of an economic, technical or organisational reason entailing changes in the workforce, thus preventing genuine place of work redundancies from being automatically unfair
  • clarify that for there to be a TUPE service provision change, the service provision must be "fundamentally or essentially the same" as before the transfer
  • allowing microbusinesses to inform and consult directly with employees
  • (in some circumstances) allowing TUPE consultation to satisfy collective redundancy consultation rules.

Importantly, the government is not:-

  • removing 'service provision change' from what amounts to a TUPE transfer
  • removing the transferor's obligation to provide employee liability information; rather, the time for providing such information is increased to 28 days.

The consultation response does not include the new draft Regulations, nor an expected implementation date (although BIS has informally suggested the implementation date will be January 2014).

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